Nestled next to the Guadalupe River in Santa Clara is one of those outdoor gems that Bay Area residents are so lucky to have in their backyards, a piece of old California landscape replete with native plants, right across from a couple of housing developments.

But this spot, the Ulistac Natural Area, wasn’t always a haven for native plants and those who love them. Until about 20 years ago, it was a golf course with non-native eucalyptus trees, artificial bunkers and chemical-laden soil. Before that, it was an orchard and cattle ranch. And long ago, it was a seasonal encampment for Ohlone Indians.

These days, as Dennis Dowling strides around the 40-acre parcel, showing off California buckeye trees, Western flannelbush and hundreds of bright orange poppies waving the in the breeze, it’s well on its way back to its roots — an area filled with native plants and birds.

“The goal was to restore a little bit of California to what real California was like,” says Dowling, pausing in the shade of a blue elderberry tree. “I’d like to reintroduce the people of California and the Bay Area to the plant life and animal life of the original Santa Clara Valley.”

Dowling, 69, is executive director of the Ulistac Natural Area Restoration and Education Project. He just retired after teaching biology and environmental science for more than 40 years.

He’s one of a core group of volunteers that includes Santa Clara residents Chris and Jeanne Salander and Clysta McLemore and former Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society Executive Director Craig Breon. With help from many others, the group started working in 1999 to rehabilitate the 40-acre former Fairway Glen golf course into the Ulistac Natural Area.

Ulistac, which takes its name from the Ohlone gathering and hunting spot that was once here, is on land owned by the city of Santa Clara. The city has devoted funds over the years for signage and some landscaping, and the area receives some funding from the Santa Clara County Open Space Authority, and support from Santa Clara University’s Environmental Studies Institute. Volunteers recently secured a grant from the Santa Clara Valley Water District to pay for more improvements.

Dowling says volunteers, including those from school, college and church groups, have put in thousands of hours in the past decade or so, planting shrubs, flowers and trees that are native to the Santa Clara Valley, and a little bit further afield.

Part of the question in this restoration project, Dowling says, has been “What are we going to restore it back to?” Are plants that are typically found in foothill regions welcome, even though the Ulistac area is a relative lowland? What about plants native to other parts of California, such as certain oaks from the Paso Robles area, that nonetheless do very well in Santa Clara Valley?

“Purists would say, ‘Wait a minute, that’s not supposed to be here,’ ” Dowling says. He and others reason that the climate of the area has grown warmer in the past couple of centuries, and the area’s water table has changed, thanks to the Guadalupe River levee, so strict adherence to specific native plants of the early 19th century isn’t sensible.

Over the years, the Ulistac volunteers have developed some guidelines to help them deal with the issue. Choosing plants that are native to this general area, they plant shrubs and flowers from gallon containers, and hand-water them using recycled water every two weeks for two years, or maybe three if conditions are unusually dry. The same goes for the oak trees they’ve planted.

“After that … it can survive on the rain it gets from the sky,” Dowling says. “If the plant wants to be here, it will find a way.”

The plants that “want” to be at Ulistac provide visitors with some lovely scenery. In a colorful area near the entrance off Lick Mill Boulevard, Dowling shows off the California wild rose bushes, buckwheat, black sage and holly-leaf cherry.

The entire area has received no supplemental water this year, Dowling says with obvious delight.

Nearby are live oaks, valley oaks and blue oaks, bay trees and gray pines. A 15-foot Fremontodendron (flannelbush) was still covered with yellow-gold blossoms in late May, and red-violet foothill penstemon are blooming, along with a bright pink mallow tree that is popular with local butterflies.

“With native California plants, there’s always something in bloom,” Dowling says. He points out the new, pale green berries showing on a toyon tree. “If you come back in December, this will have bright red berries, which migrating birds love.”

Jeff Kent, Santa Clara’s parks supervisor, says Ulistac is popular with school groups, walkers and joggers, bird watchers and parents pushing kids in strollers. Birds such as quail, hawks, bluebirds and owls all frequent the place, as do rabbits and snakes.

“Because it’s largely undisturbed, the wildlife moves in and usually stays,” he says. “That’s an experience you’re not going to get in a typical urban park.”

Fadwa Musleh, a teacher and administrator at Granada Islamic School, a private elementary school in Santa Clara, has been taking sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders on trips to Ulistac for the past four years.

“Their connection to the Earth is stronger” because of their exposure to nature at Ulistac, she says. On a recent trip, students were studying the bees in the area, and even those who initially were afraid of bees got into it, she says. “For the first time, they were able to comfortably look at bees working, and just be fascinated.”

Walking trails crisscross the 40-acre Ulistac area, but only about 15 acres are starting to show changes because of what the group has done, Dowling says.

With a grant from the Santa Clara Valley Water District, the Ulistac volunteers, led by Dowling, soon will finish building a seasonal pond and stream — the mud should attract more butterflies.

“I’m retiring to build a creek,” jokes Dowling, who stepped down this month from Santa Clara’s Wilcox High School after 26 years there.

As funds allow, volunteers will make arrangements for felling the non-native eucalyptus that still populate the area — in one part of the area these days, visitors can see a wide swath of eucalyptus mulch that was created when some trees were taken down this spring.

The Ulistac volunteers have years worth of projects they hope to complete, including an eventual educational center and a plant nursery. But Dowling says he already feels that Ulistac has made progress that Bay Area residents will be able to enjoy for years to come.

“If we walk away from this,” he says, looking around at the California buckeye and blue elderberry trees, “it will stay here for decades upon decades.”

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